Friday, 10 November; Hiking along the C and O canal.

It is clear and finally sunny, but it is really, really cold. In fact,  it is supposed to get down to 22 degrees tonight.  We are a bit concerned about that.  
We are going to meet Rob's cousin, Maria.  She lives in Kensington, Maryland.  She is actually the daughter of Rob's Cousins Becky and Ed.  Becky's parents and Rob's Grandparents were brother and sister.
Literally....Two brothers married two sisters.  
Rob has gotten together with Maria on occasion on layovers, and she and I have been connected on Facebook, but I have never met her until today.
We went to her house in Kensington and met her and her big brown dog Lucy.  Bella got along with both of them.  
We went off to lunch, to a very cool little restaurant with all sorts of yummy kinds of food.  It was a family style restaurant and very crowded.  We had to wait a few minutes and then squeezed into a little table with an extra chair.  
From there we went to Great Falls Park to the C and O (Chesapeake and Ohio) Canal sometimes called the "Grand Old Ditch". It operated from 1831 until 1924 along the Potomac River from Georgetown, Washington, D.C. to Cumberland, Maryland.  It connects to the Alexandria Canal (Virginia), Goose Creek and Little River Navigation. It is 184.5 miles long.  It rises and falls over an elevation change of 605 feet and required the construction of 74 canal locks, 11 aqueducts to cross major streams, more than 240 culverts to cross smaller streams and the 3,118 ft Paw Paw Tunnel
The canal's principal cargo was coal from the allegheny Mountains. 
The canal way is now maintained as the chesapeake and Ohio Canal National Historical Park, with a trail that follows the old towpath.
We were on the Maryland side and we could see people walking along the River on the Virginia side.  
We walked along the river for a little ways and then crossed the bridge to an over look of the falls.

We walked further on down to the bigger Great Falls.

These falls are on the river, not along the Canal.  
We did continue down the trail and then crossed the Canal to the other side.  There we picked up a really nice trail that was full of fall leaves and pretty colors.  It was not as busy and we were able to let Bella run ahead a little bit.

There is still a boat that goes along the Canal and through a couple of locks.  It is pulled by oxen from both sides of the canal. 

 That's the boat up out of the water on planks.  The Canal level is to low for the boat to be sitting in the water right now.  It will be operating again next summer. 
We headed back to the car as we realized we only had about an hour of daylight left.  
We went back to Maria's house and said our goodbyes.  It was a really fun afternoon and nice to finally get to meet her.
We went on home.  We have some busy, traveling days ahead of us.  Rob started the laundry while I started dinner.  He is so sweet.  He transferred the wash to the dryer after we ate and then went and got it while I did the dishes.  He brought it back to the rig and we folded it and put it away.  Wow; the rig looks all neat and clean again.
We are concerned about the freeze so Rob disconnected the water and drained the hose and put it away.  We figured we would just run off the water in our tank with the water pump.  Supposedly our tanks are insulted for the cold.  He also dumped the other tanks and put all the hoses away.  Since it is so cold we won't be letting Bella out unsupervised so we put the fence away as well.  We are moving again tomorrow so all this just makes it that much easier for our move.
We watched TV and then went to bed.
Another awesome day.